


don't look away

by errantgods



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Cheesy, Fluff, Gen, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, Protective Nicky Hemmick, Soft Andrew Minyard, andrew-centric, brief mentions of homophobia and sexual assault, he deserves good things!, he's beginning to Yearn, ish?, which big yikes but it's an andrew fic so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 21:50:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19036267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/errantgods/pseuds/errantgods
Summary: As the Foxes beat their hasty retreat to the visitors’ locker room, Wymack begins his half-time verbal assault. Nobody’s in the mood to hear it except some benched freshman, Renee, and Kevin. Neil is--somewhere. Andrew is stoically ignoring what is bound to be a cataclysmically motivational tirade from Wymack, when Nicky interrupts Wymack mid-spiel.“Andrew,” he jerks his head towards the showers, demanding a very serious word with an attitude of severity that would have had medicated Andrew cackling.Everyone is watching him, no doubt wondering what this exciting none-of-their-fucking-business might be about. He takes a generous sip of water, steeling himself for whatever heartfelt nausea Nicky’s gonna try to foist upon him, and follows him into the other room.





	don't look away

The clock is running down to half-time and Andrew is staring at the striker facing off against Aaron and Nicky with the kind of intensity that’s served him so well against cops and social workers and menacing boys in juvie. 

That’s served him not so well against the most dangerous thing he’s ever met: an asshole with a smart mouth who quite literally doesn’t know how to tell the truth to save his life.

Neil, as it happens, is tense, pressing the other team’s defense with the kind of natural irritability that practice just can’t build, on the other side of the court.

On this side of the court, the striker is baiting Nicky and Aaron, trying to goad them into a fight. A sure sign that the team’s desperate, hoping they can stave off tonight’s inevitable loss by playing up the emotional radioactivity of the Foxes.

Except--it’s working. Aaron, Andrew will almost admit, seems to actually share DNA with his twin, growing more aggressive with every passing second. and Nicky, sweet couldn’t-hurt-a-fly Nicky, looks like he’s about to take a page out of the Minyard playbook and use his racquet like a lethal weapon.

Idly, as Andrew tracks the ball leaving Kevin’s racquet, he wonders what this meathead with two brain cells to rub together could be saying to move the Foxes’ pet pacifist towards the general concept of violence.

Kevin’s precious calculations fail him, and in seconds the opposing strikers are beating at the gate of the Palmetto defense, and the local spectacle draws close enough to be heard over the obsession-frenzy of the crowd and the action.

“--nighttime cuddle with your adorable little cousin?” and oh-- _ oh _ .

He’s busy deflecting a shot on the goal and, in a lapse in control that he wants to punch himself for, he sends the ball straight back at the striker, almost taking Matt’s feet out from under him.

He executes a precisely insolent shrug, like he’s telling Matt off for letting that one pass, and casts about for Neil, for any sign that he’s been found out. Neil, miraculously, worryingly, isn’t even tracking the ball, engaged in some psychological war with the backliner covering him.

This game is going to shit.

The countdown to half-time keeps Nicky and Aaron and the chorus of heckling clowns within hearing distance, as not a single one of the Foxes musters the intellectual wherewithal to regain the ball and send it back to the other end of the court so Andrew can pretend he isn’t playing this stupid sport for one minute and fourteen seconds.

Neil is somewhere out of hearing range, invisible except as a blur at the very edge of his vision. Andrew keeps him there, pretending, just for now, that he doesn’t want to follow his every move, to watch him take the backliner dogging his every step down a few pegs.

Nicky throws his racquet to the floor a bare half-second before a fucking foghorn signals the end of the first half.

Briefly, the whole court stands still, exhausted, everyone raring for a fight while Nicky and the 2000s-teen-movie-bully stare each other down. Andrew leans carelessly on his own racquet. 

A few seconds later, Aaron adjusts his grip in a very specific way that jolts the archetypical jock into a hasty retreat, as though it has just occurred to him that he’s been antagonizing someone who has, in the last 12 months, committed murder with a very similar tool for reasons not completely unrelated to his particular brand of antagonism.

As the Foxes beat their hasty retreat to the visitors’ locker room, Wymack begins his half-time verbal assault. Nobody’s in the mood to hear it except some benched freshman, Renee, and Kevin. Neil is--somewhere. Andrew is stoically ignoring what is bound to be a cataclysmically motivational tirade on Wymack’s part when Nicky interrupts Wymack mid-spiel.

“Andrew,” he jerks his head towards the showers, demanding a very serious word with an attitude of severity that would have had medicated Andrew cackling. 

Everyone is watching him, no doubt wondering what this exciting none-of-their-fucking-business might be about. He takes a generous sip of water, steeling himself for whatever heartfelt nausea Nicky’s gonna try to foist upon him, and follows him into the other room.

“Fuck that guy,” Nicky says, venomous, looking very closely at Andrew.

Andrew stares at him for a moment, waiting for him to break, but surprises himself by breaking first. “I don’t know what you  _ think _ you need to say to me, but consider it done and feel free to not talk to me again tonight.”

Nicky’s face does something complicated as he turns abruptly to pace the length of the room. 

“No--I, listen,” he takes a breath, stops, refocuses on Andrew’s face. “I’m not here to defend myself. You know me. You judge me based on what I’ve said, what I’ve done,” and Andrew’s certain that if Nicky mentions kissing Neil when he was drugged and panicked at Eden’s Twilight, Andrew  _ will _ throw him through a wall. He’s grateful when Nicky stops there, now physically reaching into the mildewy air for answers.

Andrew focuses on a fresh callus on his thumb, flaky and uncomfortable, waiting for Nicky to gather his thoughts so he can get the fuck out of here and get back to his ridiculous denial of the importance of Exy to life as he knows it.

Nicky regains his footing and begins to speak again, deliberately, certain of himself, “I’m going to tell you what I wish more people had told me when I was younger, and if you don’t need to hear it then you can just listen anyway and leave and pretend this never happened, but--”

Andrew begins, casually, to pick at his thumb, wondering if Neil is drinking water or gatorade in the next room, if he’s convening the brain trust to bring them to a strong finish in the second half, if Nicky can tell how spectacularly, blindly one-track-minded he feels all the fucking time.

“--I know you heard all that, or maybe not  _ all _ but enough. Definitely too much. Listen. People talk a lot of shit about how gay men are predators. How they--we--take advantage of people, how there’s something wrong with us and. I. Listen, I’m not gonna pretend i know what it’s like for you after. Everything. But--”

He takes another deep breath, a half-step towards Andrew, a full step back, spreads his hands in an almost desperately non-offensive gesture, waits for Andrew to glance at him, before he starts speaking again.

“There’s nothing wrong with  _ wanting _ , Andrew. There’s nothing wrong with--” he pauses again, runs his hands through his hair, shakes his hands out like they hurt. “Andrew, don’t judge yourself for anything but what  _ you’ve _ done. don’t hold what anyone has decided for you against yourself.”

Then, again a breath, and again, “There’s nothing wrong with wanting what you  _ want _ .”

Andrew nods perfunctorily and lifts his thumb again, waiting for Nicky to leave. He doesn’t. Instead, he stops a couple feet in front of him, and when he speaks, Andrew can tell his voice is shaking.

“Andrew, look at me.” So he does. “Did you hear me?” His voice is quiet, but Andrew nods again. “Do you believe--” he cuts himself off, restarts, “Do you believe that I mean that?”

Andrew looks directly at him for the first time since he started talking, looks away. He wonders why Nicky’s undertaken such a thankless job, supporting him and his brother with nothing to show for it after  _ years _ of work. 

He wonders why his stomach hurts. He wonders how Nicky’s barely said a coherent sentence but it feels like he’s set forth some fundamental truth Andrew hasn’t gotten the hang of yet. He wonders how he’s so fucking transparent to his cousin when he hasn’t had an actual conversation with him, maybe ever. 

He nods. He wonders if Neil remembered to take off his neck guard when he stepped off the court.

He follows Nicky out of the locker room, stands just inside the doorframe, and watches the way Neil hangs on every word Wymack says like the next forty-five minutes on the court are the most important of his whole life.

After the game the Foxes haul themselves off the court and through the locker rooms back to their bus, and Andrew barely takes his eyes off Neil the whole time. 

They end up sitting next to each other, at the back of the bus, Andrew with his back pressed against the window and his legs pulled up, composed and the textbook definition of casual, pressing his knee into Neil’s shoulder. Neil gives him a tired smile, watches him, and Andrew hums almost imperceptibly, flicks his eyes away to stare out the window opposite them.

When the bus pulls out of the parking lot to head back to Palmetto, Neil pretends the jerk of the bus jostles him into leaning on andrew’s legs, and Andrew doesn’t call him out on it.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never posted a fic here or really written one but the ghost of my 2015 self possessed me and moved me to write this! I also have some #thots about Aaron and Andrew reconnecting but those are not for today! lmk if there's any way i can improve the tags for this!


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